Question About The Book
Is this movie more similar to the book than the version that came out in 2000?
shareI haven't seen the 2000 version, but this version follows the book quite closely
shareThe 1959 version was closer.
"I'm not reckless . . . I'm skillful!"
More similar, especially regarding the ending. There's also the fact that the 2000 remake presents a group of thoroughly dislikable characters who I could care less about if they lived or died.
shareConcerning the 2000 remake: there was also the way the message from the north was handled. The denouement was overly complicated and lacked the simple irony of just the Coke bottle caught in the drape.
Nice observation about the characters. I like Armand Assante and wouldn't mind seeing him play a submarine captain again, but he wasn't quite Dwight Towers.
"I'm not reckless . . . I'm skillful!"
The 1959 film was closer to the book than the awful 2000 TV movie, but not that close.
Many details were changed: the entire southern hemisphere was still inhabited in the book, whereas in the film only Australia was left, which is a virtually impossible scenario; the radiation took two years to travel south in the book but only a few months in the film; in the book, the nuclear scientist was in his late 20s and called John Osborne, in the film it's Julian Osborn and he's 60; Moira is a 24-year-old blond in the novel and a 37-year-old brunette in the movie; the sub is called the Scorpion in the book and the Sawfish in the film; the sub made a voyage to northern Australia and New Guinea in the book but not the film; the radio signals came from a naval base in Washington state in the book, but from an oil refinery in San Diego in the movie; Dwight and Moira don't sleep together in the book but do so in the film; and there were many other changes, major and minor, in the film.
Nevil Shute, who died less than a month after the film debuted, disliked the movie.
Still, its many changes in detail notwithstanding, the 1959 film was certainly much more like the book than the 2000 thing. In part this was of course due to the many technological changes that had occurred in the intervening forty years (the radio signals aspect is the obvious example), as well as the different geopolitical situation in the early 21st century vs. the mid-20th, but even allowing for such updates the 2000 film was so different, and so loudly, offensively terrible, badly written, poorly acted and atrociously directed, that even Shute would have embraced the 1959 version as a masterpiece compared to the mess made 41 years later.
the entire southern hemisphere was still inhabited in the book, whereas in the film only Australia was left, which is a virtually impossible scenario
I don't think the film ever says that only Australia is left; it's just that it never mentions anywhere else (other than the west coast of the US, obviously). The book has the time to make reference to how things are faring in New Zealand and southern Africa, for instance; the film doesn't spend the time mentioning them, or even mentioning how the radiation is spreading via the winds of the upper stratosphere. I think the one nod in that direction in the film is when Peter is asking the doctor at the beach about the suicide pills, and whether he can get some early; he mentions how they already have them (i.e. need them) in Darwin and Port Moresby.
You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment. share
Sorry, p-a-b, the movie does indeed specifically state that only Australia is left.
Right at the beginning of the film, as the sub sails into Port Philip Bay, we see the lighthouse from which the horn is blasting. The keeper is shown going inside to telephone the Navy Department and while he's starting to do that we hear the radio on beside him, with the announcer saying, "We repeat: the atomic war has ended, but the Prime Minister reports no sign of human life anywhere but here."
(Of course, the keeper had no television to turn on!)
Oddly, this exact same Australia-only scenario is repeated in the 2000 TVM.
You're quite right about that reference to Port Moresby. I posted that as a goof a few years ago (I haven't looked; I assume it's still there), and have also pointed out this inconsistency in some posts around here. But there are so many inconsistencies, bits of illogic, and stray references from the book that are otherwise completely unexplained in the film and unrelated to anything we're ever told in it, that the doctor's reference to Moresby is almost the least of the film's glaring errors!
Well, maybe they just accelerated the timeframe. before the end of the book, NZ has been wiped out (if I remember correctly, there's some surprise that it went more quickly than expected), South Africa has stopped transmitting, no-one has hear from South America in a good while, and even Tasmania has gone quiet, so only Melbourne is left.
You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.
No my friend, I'm afraid you mis-remember the book in those particulars.
Throughout the book there are several conversations stating that once Melbourne is gone, Tasmania would last another fortnight or three weeks, as would the South Island of New Zealand, with "the Indians" in Tierra del Fuego the last to die. (It's also stated that as far as anyone knows there's no one in the Antarctic by that time.)
We hear this scenario repeated as late as the time the radio has announced radiation sickness in Adelaide and Sydney. John Osborne tells his uncle at the Pastoral Club that they've also got cases in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, as well as Auckland, and that with Cape Town affected (though they're still in radio communication with them) all of Africa will be out in a week or so. That will leave Melbourne as the last major city, but with the other bits still around for a while afterward.
However, Shute, I assume for dramatic purposes, did indeed accelerate the speed at which the radiation spreads south. At one point he has an exchange between Dwight and Osborne in which the American asks, "There's no chance of it slowing up and giving us a break, is there?" to which the scientist shakes his head and says, "Nothing. There's not the slightest indication -- if anything it seems to be coming a little faster. That's probably associated with the reduced area of the Earth's surface as it moves southward from the equator; it seems to be accelerating a little in terms of latitude. The end of August appears to be about the time." (I actually quoted that from memory, so the wording may be a trifle off!)
But Shute did this out of proportion and not realistically. Looking at a map -- even allowing for the increased pace of the radioactivity as the size of the Earth's surface diminishes as you move farther south from the equator -- Tasmania and NZ's South Island lie and, particularly the latter, extend much farther south, so that they should last much longer than merely two or three weeks -- at least a month before the radioactivity gets there, and with additional time for it to encompass all of these places. (I would say life would remain in Tasmania until the end of September, and in the southernmost portion of South Island until mid-to-late October; with the southernmost tip of South America surviving into November at least.) Again, this is even granting the accelerated pace as the planet physically becomes smaller as you travel south. Instead, it's suddenly spreading far faster and to a far greater degree than it had been for the past two years -- much more so than the mere reduction in the Earth's surface area would allow for.
We see this when it finally hits Melbourne. Osborn goes to his office one more time and sees the last report of radioactive infection he'll ever receive. About 50% of the population in Melbourne is affected; but also, seven cases are reported from Hobart and three from Christchurch. This is all out of proportion even with the accelerated pace Shute notes late in the novel. By all previously stated reckoning, even with the radiation spreading faster these places should have been unaffected for some while at least. I believe Shute made this last-minute alteration to show that indeed the end was coming, and that these places farther south were definitely about to succumb as well.
Bottom line, Shute makes several last-minute fiddles with his timeline to the point of lost credibility and contradictions within his own narrative, but either way Melbourne isn't the only place left and it will go out before the others.